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CAD on Vista Performs Much Worse than on XP

Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 4:33 PM
Various commentators around the web are now reporting on how various CAD programs run on Windows Vista. The common theme seems to be that performance takes a huge hit.

Tom's Hardware has published benchmark results using SPECperf for various visualization and MCAD programs. Average performace was down 90% in Vista for MCAD applications (PTC's Pro/Engineer, UGS's NX and Teamcenter Visualization Mockup, Dassault Systemes CATIA and SolidWorks), and down 86.4% in visualization programs (Autodesk 3ds Max, LightScape, and Maya).

I expected there to be no benefit for CAD users to an immediate upgrade to Windows Vista, and I've said so here before. But it is rather shocking to see these reports of such terrible degradation of performance.

I will be attending press events sponsored by SolidWorks and Autodesk in the next two weeks. I am sure CAD performance in Windows Vista will be a hot topic at each event.

  --RSN

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# re: CAD on Vista Performs Much Worse than on XP

2/1/2007 11:36 AM by MH
So far, the Windows 64-bit CAD execution has been found woefully wanting. While Windows XP (x64) offers decent performance for Catia, the lack of availability of drivers for other apps makes it a bad OS choice for a multi-tasking machine. (especially where wireless or license serving applications are concerned) Wish I could be more optimistic, but I had hoped that Vista, despite its inevitable flaws, would at least correct the old problems before adding new ones. - Matt Hanson, vice president, Space Coast CAD Solutions (Catia design services provider) - www.cad-design-engineering.com

# re: CAD on Vista Performs Much Worse than on XP

2/2/2007 2:00 PM by Nick
Ummm... that shows 3Ds MAX runs faster on Vista. 10 frames were rendered with LESS time.

# re: CAD on Vista Performs Much Worse than on XP

2/2/2007 7:11 PM by Tom Schmidt
I just loaded ADT on my brand new Dell computer loaded with Vista and after loading the ADT, I keep being told that there is an incompatability problem and Vista keeps closing down my ADT even before it loads. I'm screwed. I need to draw and now I am going to have to reassemble my old computer and just set this system aside. 90% of my computer use is using my ADT. I sure do hope that Microsoft and Autodesk get there act together pretty soon.

# re: CAD on Vista Performs Much Worse than on XP

2/4/2007 7:14 AM by Michael
@Tom:
Did you try the compatability wizard to either run as administrator, disable desktop composition, or run as if it were Windows XP (sp2)? These seem to help in AutoCAD for me.

# re: CAD on Vista Performs Much Worse than on XP

2/6/2007 3:23 AM by Alberto Savelli
I've some doubts about the result in the mentioned article.
What does it mean "performance down 90%"?
I understood that a software has been used to test the CAD performances.
The software is SPECviewperf® 9.
By looking at the Spec home page, it seems that it is not tuned for Vista. So, first of all maybe that the performance problem is in the measure, not in the CAD systems.
Also, this SPECviewperf® 9 just checks OpenGL performance. Nothing more.

bye
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